Introduction

Network Agent serves different purposes in Forcepoint Web Security and Forcepoint URL Filtering deployments.

• In Forcepoint Web Security deployments, and when Forcepoint URL Filtering is integrated with a third-party proxy or firewall product, Network Agent is an optional component that may be used to:
  • Manage non-HTTP requests
  • Provide enhanced logging
  • Manage Internet access based on bandwidth

  In Forcepoint Web Security deployments, Content Gateway can offer some of the same features as Network Agent, by detecting protocols that tunnel over HTTP (see Configuring tunneled protocol detection) and offering some bandwidth management capabilities (Using Bandwidth Optimizer to manage bandwidth).

• When Forcepoint URL Filtering is installed as a standalone product, Network Agent is a required component that enables:
  • Policy enforcement
  • Network protocol and Internet application management
  • Bandwidth management
  • Logging of bytes transferred

Network Agent works by monitoring overall network usage, including bytes transferred. It logs usage summaries—which include start time and end time, overall bytes used, and bytes used per protocol—at predefined intervals.

When used, Network Agent is typically configured to see all traffic in your network, and can distinguish between requests sent from internal machines to internal machines (hits to an intranet server, for example) and requests sent from internal machines to external machines such as web servers (user Internet requests, for example).